Friday nights, 7-8.30pm during term time Stokes Valley Pool Super affordable at $50 per term per person • Swimming lessons • Lifesaving lessons and qualifications • Lane swimming for adults • Supervision for littlies in the water Nau mai, haere mai! Come and join us! Contact carolyn.vanleuven@gmail.com

Kia ora koutou Raphael House whanau

Our Community Swimming and Lifesaving Club is starting up again tonight 7 May and runs on Friday nights during term time from 7-8.30pm at Stokes Valley Pool. (This term we have the week off for Queen’s Birthday weekend and for the last day of term due to the pool’s annual maintenance closure.)

If you’d like an affordable opportunity to have fun and improve your skills in the water, come along and join us. Everyone is welcome – students of all ages, from pre-schoolers to year 13, parents, siblings, grandparents / wider whanau – nau mai, haere mai!

We offer coached swimming and water safety groups from beginner through to advanced levels at all ages and lifesaving programmes for competent swimmers from year 7 to adults. We also provide opportunities for parents and whanau to swim at the same time - whether that be lane swimming (there’s always a lane available for adult swimmers) or making up / joining an adult swimming or lifesaving group - or coaching / learning to coach themselves. And we have supervisors available to look after littlies when they’re not in lessons and you’re swimming.

If you'd like to join us, please let Carolyn know (carolyn.vanleuven@gmail.com) so that we can keep a place for you / your child (we’ve kept spots for all swimmers from last year and look forward to seeing you!). Or just turn up at the pool tonight to register and we’ll find a spot for you / your child(ren).

Our very small fees – please pay on Kindo

Fees are $50 per person this term for everyone (tamariki/students and adults) to cover our costs, due by next Friday 14 May. If for some reason this is problematic for you, please get in touch to make alternative arrangements. If you can afford to pay more, please feel free to – we’ve provided options for additional support on Kindo. This will help us to do more training with our coaches, provide equipment, and support those who would otherwise struggle to come.

So, grab your togs, a towel and goggles if you have them, and come on down to the pool!

Carolyn, Joe, Ragini and the team

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Here’s a bit more info on what we’re about:

Our Community Swimming and Lifesaving Club runs every Friday night during term time, from 7-8.30 at Stokes Valley pool in both the main pool and the learners' pool (younger ones have lessons early on in that timeslot – we know it seems late for little ones, but many find it a fun and relaxing way to end the week, bring their PJs to change into afterwards and have a bit of a Saturday sleep in).

We have a vision that every student in our community should be happy, safe and skilled in the water; and that stronger high school-aged swimmers should be able to help others in difficulty in the water. We’d love this to extend to our parents and guardians and wider community as well.

Because we're doing it for the community, with our coaches volunteering their time, we're able to offer school families the opportunity to join in for an extremely low cost - $50 per person this term (children and adults), including a family fun night for the last session of term (2 July).

We have coaches working with small groups, just like with other swimming lessons/clubs.

The difference is that the children are learning alongside their friends and peers, they have time and space to play before/after their lesson, we take a more flexible approach to learning (e.g. we have a practical focus on water safety and confidence, teach some things earlier or differently than others where it's beneficial – recognising that everyone’s different, and do our best to make it fun), and there's an amazing community spirit in play - a real buzz down at the pool every Friday :-).

We also provide opportunities for parents (and grandparents and extended whanau / friends) to swim at the same time - whether that be lane swimming (there’s always a lane available for adult swimmers) or joining an adult coaching or lifesaving group - or coaching / learning to coach themselves.

Towards the end of last year we began a training programme with some new high-school aged trainee coaches working alongside our more experienced coaches to help us build up a pipeline of great people and keep our team sustainable, so we have a lovely enthusiastic and diverse team!

We also offer lifesaving coaching / training / qualifications for older students (competent swimmers from about class 7 up - we also offer this to adults if there’s enough demand). We have a very experienced and well qualified lifesaving team.